[[!meta date="2012-10-29 12:34:56 +0200"]]
[[!meta title="Call for testing: 0.14~rc2"]]

<p>You can help Tails! The <em>second</em> release candidate for the
upcoming version 0.14 is out. Please test it and see if all works for
you.</p>

[[!toc levels=1]]

<h1>How to test Tails 0.14~rc2?</h1>

<ol>
  <li>
    <p>
      <strong>Keep in mind that this is a test image.</strong> We have made sure
      that it is not broken in an obvious way, but it might still contain
      undiscovered issues.
    </p>
  </li>
  <li>
    <p>Download the ISO image and its signature:</p>
    <p>
      <a class="download-file"
         href="http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/testing/tails-i386-0.14~rc2/tails-i386-0.14~rc2.iso"
      >Tails 0.14~rc2 ISO image</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a class="download-signature"
         href="http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/testing/tails-i386-0.14~rc2/tails-i386-0.14~rc2.iso.pgp"
      >Tails 0.14~rc2 signature</a>
    </p>
  </li>
  <li>
    <p>
      Verify the ISO image.
    </p>
  </li>
  <li>
    <p>
      Have a look at the list of <a href="#known_issues">known issues
      of this release</a> and the list of [[longstanding known
      issues|support/known_issues]].
    </p>
  </li>
  <li>
    <p>
      Test wildly!
    </p>
  </li>
</ol>

<p>If you find anything that is not working as it should, please [[report to
us|doc/first_steps/bug_reporting]]! Bonus points if you check that it is not a
<a href="#known_issues">known issue of this release</a> or a
[[longstanding known issue|support/known_issues]].</p>

<h1>What's new since 0.14~rc1?</h1>

Since the following changes are brand new in this release candidate
they are what we really need to be tested by you. In particular we ask
you to pay attention to whether Iceweasel has any new issues or not.

<ul>
  <li>Iceweasel
    <ul>
      <li>Update to 10.0.9esr-1+tails1, which has all the privacy enhancing
      patches from the Tor Browser Bundle applied to it.</li>
      <li>Install iceweasel from our own repo, http://deb.tails.boum.org.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Minor improvements
    <ul>
      <li>Remove the last absolute path in our isolinux config, which makes
      it easier to migrate from isolinux to syslinux (just rename the
      directory), and hence might make it easier for 3rd party USB
      installers (like the Universal USB Installer) to support Tails.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Bug fixes
    <ul>
      <li>Fix tordate vs. Tor 0.2.3.x. Since 0.2.3.x Tor doesn't download a
      consensus for clocks that are more than 30 days in the past or 2
      days in the future (see commits f4c1fa2 and 87622e4 in Tor's git
      repo). For such clock skews we set the time to the Tor authority's
      cert's valid-after date to ensure that a consensus can be
      downloaded.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Software
    <ul>
      <li>Update tails-persistence-setup to 0.20-1, which should make it
      possible to install Tails on large (>= 32 GiB) USB drives.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<h1>What's new since 0.13?</h1>

<ul>
  <li>Major new features
    <ul>
    <li>gpgApplet can now handle public-key cryptography.</li>
    <li>Install an additional, PAE-enabled kernel with NX-bit
    support. This kernel is auto-selected when the hardware supports
    it and will:
      <ul>
        <li>provide executable space protection, preventing certain types of
        buffer overflows from being exploitable.</li>
        <li>enable more than 4 GiB of system memory.</li>
        <li>make all processors/cores available, including their
        power-saving functionality.</li>
      </ul>
    </li>
    <li>Add a persistence preset for NetworkManager connections.</li>
    <li>Enable Tor stream isolation; several new SocksPorts with
    appropriate Isolate* options have been added for different use
    cases (i.e. applications). All application's have been
    reconfigured to use these new SocksPorts, which should increase
    anonymity by making it more difficulte to correlate traffic from
    different applications or "online identities".</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Minor improvements
  <ul>
    <li>On kexec reboot, make the boot quiet only if debug=wipemem was not
    enabled.</li>
    <li>Update torproject.org's APT repo key.</li>
    <li>Update the embedded Tails signing key.</li>
    <li>Use symlinks instead of dupliqcating localized searchplugins.</li>
    <li>Rewrite Tails firewall using ferm. Tails firewall was written in
    very unsophisticated iptables-save/restore format. As more feature
    creeped in, it started to be quite unreadable.</li>
    <li>Optimize VirtualBox modules build at runtime to avoid installing the
    userspace utils N times.</li>
    <li>Drop most of Vidalia's configuration. Our custom lines just caused
    trouble (with multiple SocksPorts) and the default works well.</li>
    <li>Blacklist PC speaker module. On some computers, having the
    pcspkr module loaded means loud beeps at bootup, shutdown and when
    using the console. As it draws useless attention to Tails users,
    it is better to prevent Linux from loading it by default.</li>
    <li>Remove all addons from the Unsafe Browser. No addons are
    essential for the Unsafe Browser's intent. If anything they will
    modify the network fingerprint compared to a normal Iceweasel
    install, which is undesirable.</li>
    <li>Prevent some unwanted packages to be installed at all, rather than
    uninstalling them later. This should speed up the build a bit.</li>
    <li>Add a symlink from /etc/live/config to
    /etc/live/config.d. This makes the system compatible with
    live-config 3.0.4-1, without breaking backward compatibility with
    various parts of the system that use the old path.</li>
    <li>Do not run unecessary scripts during shutdown sequence, to make
    shutdown faster.</li>
    <li>Fix Iceweasel's file associations. No more should you be suggested
    to open a PDF in the GIMP.</li>
    <li>Make live-persist deal with persistent ~/.gconf subdirs so that
    any options saved therein actually get persistent.</li>
    <li>Prevent memlockd unload on shutdown, to make sure that all
    necessary tools for memory wiping are available when the new
    kernel has kexec'd.</li>
    <li>Patch initscripts headers instead of fiddling with
    update-rc.d. We now let insserv figure out the correct ordering
    for the services during startup and shutdown, i.e. use
    dependency-based boot sequencing.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Bugfixes
    <ul>
      <li>Include <code>seq</code> in the ramdisk environment: it is
      used to wipe more memory. This fixes the long-standing bug about
      Tails not cleaning all memory on shutdown.</li>
      <li>Fix Yelp crashing on internal links</li>
      <li>Allow amnesia user to use Tor's TransPort. This firewall
      exception is necessary for applications that doesn't have
      in-built SOCKS support and cannot use torsocks. One such example
      is Claws Mail, which uses tsocks since torsocks makes it leak
      the hostname. This exception, together with Tor's automatic
      .onion mapping makes Claws Mail able to use hidden service mail
      providers again.</li>
      <li>Force threads locking support in Python DBus binding. Without this
      liveusb-creator doesn't work with a PAE-enabled kernel.</li>
      <li>Fix localized search plugins for 'es' and 'pt'</li>
      <li>Fix live-boot's readahead, which caused an unnecessary pause
      during boot.</li>
      <li>Factorize GCC wanted / available version numbers in
      VirtualBox modules building hook. This, incidentally, fixes a
      bug caused by duplication and not updating all instances.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Tor
    <ul>
      <li>Update to version 0.2.3.22-rc-1~~squeeze+1, a new major
      version. It's not a stable release, but we have been assured by
      the Tor developers that this is the right move.</li>
      <li>Stop setting custom value for the Tor LongLivedPorts
      setting. Gobby's port was upstreamed in Tor 0.2.3.x.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>htpdate
    <ul>
      <li>Use curl instead of wget, and add a --proxy option passed through
      to curl.</li>
      <li>Remove the --fullrequest option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
      <li>Remove --dns-timeout option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
      <li>Change --proxy handling to support Debian Squeeze's curl.</li>
      <li>Clarify what happens if --proxy is not used.</li>
      <li>Compute the median of the diffs more correctly.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Hardware support
    <ul>
      <li>Update Linux to 3.2.30-1.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Software
    <ul>
      <li>Update vidalia to 0.2.20-1+tails1.</li>
      <li>Update bundled WhisperBack package to 1.6.1:
        <ul>
          <li>Raise the socket library timeout to 120 seconds</li>
          <li>Use smtplib's timeout parameter</li>
          <li>Fix error output when calling send a 2nd time</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li>Update liveusb-creator to 3.11.6-3.</li>
      <li>Update i2p to 0.9.2.</li>
      <li>Update tails-persistence-setup to 0.18-1.</li>
      <li>Install console-setup and keyboard-configuration from unstable
      (required by new initramfs-tools).</li>
      <li>Update tails-greeter to 0.7.3:
        <ul>
          <li>Import pt_BR translation.</li>
          <li>Let langpanel usable during option selection stage</li>
          <li>Print less debugging messages by default
          (below are changes in tails-greeter 0.7.2:)</li>
          <li>Use correct test operators.</li>
          <li>Generate language codes of available locales at package build
          time.</li>
          <li>Read list of language codes from where we have saved it at
          package build time.</li>
          <li>Drop tails-lang-helper, not used anymore.</li>
          <li>Do not compile locales at login time anymore. Tails now ships
          locales-all.</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Internationalization
    <ul>
      <li>Fix Tails specific Iceweasel localization for pt-BR</li>
      <li>Add Japanese input system: scim-anthy.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Build system
    <ul>
      <li>Catch more errors during build time:
        <ul>
          <li>Ensure that all local hooks start with 'set -e'.</li>
          <li>Fail hard if adduser fails in local hooks.</li>
          <li>Fail hard if 'rm' fails in local hooks.</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li>vagrant: Ensure we have the set of Perl packages needed by our
      Ikiwiki</li>
      <li>vagrant: Configure live-build to ship with ftp.us.debian.org.
      Using cdn.debian.net leads to bad interactions with Tor.</li>
      <li>vagrant: Don't use gzip compression when building from a tag, i.e.
      a release.</li>
      <li>vagrant: Optionally use bootstrap stage cache for faster builds
      via the 'cache' build option.</li>
      <li>vagrant: Make sure release builds are clean, i.e. they don't use
      any potentially dangerous build options.</li>
      <li>vagrant: Disable live-build package caching. This build system is
      meant to use an external caching proxy, so live-build's cache just
      wastes RAM (for in-memory builds) or disk space.</li>
      <li>vagrant: use aufs magic instead of copying source into tmpfs.
      This reduces the amount of RAM required for building Tails in.</li>
      <li>vagrant: Allow in-memory builds when a VM with enough memory is
      already started.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<h1><a id="known_issues"></a>Known issues in 0.14~rc2</h1>

<h2>Stream isolation inconsistency in Claws Mail</h2>

<p>Claws Mail isn't using its dedicated Tor SocksPort for Tor hidden
service IMAP/POP/SMTP servers (instead Tor's TransPort is used). This
is just a deviation from Tails' design and should have no adverse real
world consequences.</p>
